Although there are over three hundred species of British fungus which are known to be edible, fewer than twenty have any real potential for commercial exploitation or are regularly collected by casual foragers. Many are too uncommon to justify picking them under any circumstances. Some are too easily confused with something you really don't want to be eating, for example several of the Amanita species which occur infrequently and closely resemble seriously poisonous and/or psychoactive species. Some have a taste or texture that most people don't like much, although this is going to be a subjective judgement. Some, such as the smaller edible members of Coprinus (the Inkcaps) or Mycena, are too insubtantial or crumbly to bother with. However, this still leaves a large selection of species which are worth eating, but which you will only ever eat if you find and identify them yourself. I came across one of these on my latest foraging trip. It wasn't actually much a of foraging trip. It was about 2pm on one of those dull, drizzly afternoons we've had so many of recently and I had just finished going through Miles Irving's excellent Forager Handbook, looking for edible plants to watch out for. Irving was explaining in the entry under Lamb's Lettuce that you should never underestimate what can be found very close to home and I decided to go out for a fifteen minute stroll to see if I could find some lacy-leaved umbellifers or something-else interesting to try to identify. I wasn't even looking for fungi, but no more than three hundred metres from my front door, growing on some debris discarded from the nearby allotments, I found some large, grey mushrooms with which I was not familiar.
Having located some umbellifers also (you can see one in the top right of this photo), I headed back home only to come across what appeared to be a patch of one of the main plants I was supposed to be looking for - Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum).
The Alexanders tasted like very strong celery. The best time to collect Alexanders is supposed to be the spring (they grow through the winter), and some sources advise peeling the stems before cooking. These were rather small specimens, which had only just started growing and the stems were too small to peel. I know where to find them now, so I'll watch them through the coming months and try them at different stages of their development.
The mushroom turned out to be a Stubble Rosegill (Volvariella gloiocephala).
Foraging notes
Identification: Volvariella gloiocephala could easily be confused with an Amanita. Like the Amanitas, it emerges from a sac (volva), but unlike them it has no ring. However, rings can get lost so you have to be careful. If you are in doubt, a spore print can distinguish them for certain. The Amanitas have white spores and the spores of the rosegills are pink. There's not much else you could confuse an adult specimen with, given its substantial size. Smaller ones might be confused with all sorts of things, including, if you got it badly wrong, a Death Cap. They grow on compost heaps and other nutrient-rich organic debris.
Consumption: They taste a bit earthy, and a bit something else I couldn't quite put a name to. My specimens were waterlogged, having been collected in the rain, which made them difficult to cook, but they were still good to eat. I'd eat them again, but accompany them with a strong taste like garlic.
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Edible wild mushrooms and wild herbs
